when a future focus leads to failure

One Sunday afternoon, on our way to lunch, I said to Doug Fields,

“Just had a thought: Our life is going to be filled with weekend services. We’ll be running one thousand weekend services…every weekend for the rest of our lives. Do you ever see ministry as a long series of weekend programs?”

He looked at me like I was crazy. (He’s right. Who thinks like that? I was only a few months into my internship at Saddleback Church, so maybe that explains it.)

Seth Godin has a posted an blog this week in which he explored the problem that comes from looking too far down the road for too long.

We might give ourselves permission to do an average job on this week’s message because there will always be next week’s message. The certainty of the next can negate the excellence of what’s now. He suggests a different attitude: what if approached every important task as if it was the last time we’d get to do it?

After loosing The Big Game, there’s comfort in knowing, “there’s always next year.” How well would the team compete if they began the season with that attitude?

This kind of urgency is biblical (Mt. 25:1-13) and logical (today could be our last day on earth). This urgency must be tempered (or we’ll be too anxious), but it shouldn’t be tamed (or will be too passive). If we’re not careful, certainty leads to complacency.